Updated on March 28, 2022
Doug Tales 59: Red Elk, Part One
Ten years ago, the Metis medicine man Red Elk (1942-2015) spoke in Sandy, Utah, with two others at a seminar sponsored by Doug Mendenhall. Doug encouraged attenders in emails sent to many people. Here is the one of those unpublished emails dated June 15, 2011, which shares Doug’s motivation and reasons for spending so much time and effort hosting seminars and workshops for others:
For a long time I have asked the Lord why I seem to be required to do these seminar and workshops. I do enjoy seeing my friends but some days it is hard dealing with what goes with doing a workshop; the aggravation, testing, complaints, etc. can be trying sometimes.
Today I had a very gifted friend that none of you have met send me what the Lord had given her for me to read. I will quote a small part of it: “(These seminar and workshops) are to bring the children of light to an understanding of what THEY have been given and how to use it. I’ll tell you why! In the last days these children of light will be able to use the powers they have and fight against evil by developing the gifts they have been given. (The seminars and workshops) will teach them how to develop these gifts and allow other people with gifts to tell them how also.”
She is EXACTLY right! I have tried to convey this for years now. I would love to share the emails and phone calls from people up to their eyeballs in spiritual problems asking what to do. These seminars have taught so much of this stuff. I admit that I do become somewhat discouraged when people make a decision not to attend without asking our Father if they should come. If it was something I was doing to just do it or to make money I really wouldn’t care. After all is said and done we don’t make much doing these and as I said they are more of a hassle than not for my family, except we get to see our incredible friends and I do learn many amazing things from them.
The other part that is sad is after someone gets a witness to attend and then they don’t. I remember at one of the Ezekiel seminars I did years ago, three gifted people that had received a witness to attend and speak backed out because of the long trip. Later, I asked a couple of them if they had been reprimanded by the Lord and they confirmed that they had been.
I love the fact that we have our agency and God allows us to “self-select.” It has always been that way. The people in 3 Nephi that witnessed the Lord in the Americas some eleven months after His death and resurrection in Jerusalem “self-selected” themselves. They traveled to the Land of Bountiful and were marveling at the changes there when He appeared. What if they had said the journey was too far to make or it was too hot or they didn’t have the funds, etc. Then they would have also “self-selected” out of the experience. Though they would have never have known. But would their progression have been stopped or slowed down? I hope to shout it would have! Look what they would have missed. How many times in my life has the Spirit prompted me to do something and I didn’t because it was hard or out of my box—I self-selected out of the experience He wanted me to have. The young rich man that asked the Lord what he lacked and the Lord gave him a list of things to do and he said he had done them all. So the Lord then told him to sell all he had and come and follow Him. He declined (self-selected) and walked away, missing the last two weeks of the Lord’s life. He missed being an eyewitness to the greatest events of our planet.
We had the good fortune to have Red Elk do a healing over the phone with several of my friends for two people. Some of us agreed that it was similar to many other modalities and not really new information. But was that just on the surface? Could it have been we “self-selected” ourselves out of having incredible information given to us from the Spirit by thinking or saying such things. Absolutely. How come we can read the Scriptures with the Spirit and then declare that someone must have written them anew during the night because we learned so many new concepts and ideas that “just weren’t there before.”
Red Elk will be coming to the SLCC Larry Miller campus on the 22nd of this month [June 2011]… I have had people say that he will say nothing new that they don’t already know. Really? If the Spirit told you to attend then and you don’t go then you have just “self-selected” from some vital things the Spirit might want to teach you. The only question I can ask of those is did they get a confirmation on their knees that He does not want them there. Then that is wonderful. It is really sad if we have been seeking light and wanting to know and because of pride or whatever, we don’t ask our Father what He wants us to do. Is it far to go, or cost too much. If He says to go, does it matter? Then if we do go and ask Him to teach us even greater things, such as they learned in 3 Nephi because they went, would it be worth the effort….
If you think I am blowing smoke please understand I have never been more serious. Some of us do not realize what is being unleashed upon the earth at this time. I wish you could hear the phone calls and read the emails we get from people asking for help. If you are not prepared, you will perish. Your bishop and church may not be able to help you. They are good people, true. But it is like the paper I gave out years ago from a leadership meeting where Elder Scott spoke and said: “IF we don’t have a personal relationship with Christ we will not survive what is coming.” That says it all.